sllɐqǝʎǝʎzznɟ

I was out early in the morning on Saturday to view/shoot the sunrise again. This time we decided to park out butts at the Merlion Park instead of the usual sunrise shoots at the beach. That morning I didn’t really shoot much but spent more time slacking and testing out this lens that I bought used recently. It is a very funny and weird looking little lens for my Olympus E-P1. This Pentax 25mm f1.4 lens is a manual focus lens that produces photos that are pretty sharp in the middle but blurred (plus vignetting) at the sides. Now I can forget about using that crappy ‘pinhole’ art filter in the camera to get darker corners. 😀

The Pentax lens mounted on an E-P1. Sorry I was too lazy to take a photo of my own setup … so I leeched this from Chiif Cameras website 😛

It takes a little bit of getting used to. The focusing ring is so small that I kept turning the aperture ring instead. Look at the photo above and you’ll see how small it is.

The guy who sold me this lens told me to get the lens cap from the store (free) but I couldn’t be bothered. I used a black film canister as the ‘lens cap’!!! Hahaha! Yeah it makes this fella look hell uglier and longer with the ‘lens cap’ on but I kinda think it is pretty ermm … .cool. I’ve yet to take a photo of it.

These are some sample photos when I was testing that lens on Saturday. I’ve yet to get used to doing manual focus on the E-P1. Having to press that button to switch between the magnified and normal mode (on LCD) is quite a chore.

The vignetting & blur are not visible when shooting video (in 16:9 ratio).

My conclusion is that this lens is pretty much like the Lensbaby. It is more of a ‘fun’ lens to get some extra cool effects without having to do them in post-processing.

Here are some info about this lens (taken from Chiif Cameras) online store.

Originally used for Machine Vision Applications (Pattern recognition, Gauging, Inspection of pharmaceutical / medical devices), the Pentax 25mm/f1.4 C mount lens is a high resolution lens that can be mounted and used with the Micro Four Third sensor.

The image circle of the lens is 1 inch, which is pretty close to the image circle of the Micro Four Third format. This lens renders amazing centre sharpness and at the same time produces very interesting out of focus area.

Full metal construction, focusing is smooth and precise.

Minimum focusing distance is 0.3m, which makes this lens a very versatile lens on the Micro Four Third camera bodies.

Specifications

Right after sunrise, we decided to Chinatown for some hot yummy pork rib soup (bakuteh). What a great way to end the cold morning sunrise shoot than to gulp down some herbal pork rib soup … right? That’s what we thought.

We sat down and enjoyed our heavy breakfast (I don’t usually eat much in the morning, so this was more like my breakfast + lunch) and when the food was almost finished … I saw this …

What the !#@&&@!&*&!~!!!

Beside us … on the next table was a guy (who works at the pork rib soup stall) having his breakfast. Below the table were two buckets of pork rib (ready to be cooked) and the guy’s foot …. WTF!!! Gross! Damn it!!! I felt real shitty after seeing that. As if it was not bad enough seeing the two buckets of ribs placed in the open under a table … but his foot was so damn near the uncooked food!!! Eeeew!!!

I’ll definitely avoid this food stall from now on. Duh!!! Eeeeew!!! Yucks!!!!